The role of community in contributing to work-life balance is often neglected, yet community constitutes a crucial partner and stakeholder in the work-family arena.
What do we mean by community? Like family and work, the concept of community is not a simple one and its meanings may change in different contexts. Community may be linked to place, or may be a state of being, a set of relationships or a source of identity. It may be found in families, at work or separate from them both but with an impact on them (Kagan and Lewis, 1998). Communities may share physical boundaries or be virtual. On these pages however, we focus on community as locality, with particular emphasis on the formal and informal systems that support employment and family life. Informal supports in the community which support work-life balance may include networks of friends, neighbours or extended families. They may help with childcare or other care, often on a reciprocal basis. Formal service provisions are also often essential for families to manage employment and caring, whether for children, elderly or sick relatives or others. These services include, for example, nurseries, childminders and other forms of childcare and health and welfare services. The role of formal supports in the community are recognised in the National Carers' Strategy.
An audit framework has been developed from the study of parents combining employment with the care of disabled children (see below), to assist both employers and service providers in the community to ensure that their policies and practices meet the needs of employed parents with disabled children and other working carers.